A brief update on the nomination of the former Michael Reese Hospital campus to the National Register of Historic Places: The notification of the pending nomination was published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, according to Barbara Wyatt, a National Register historian in Washington. It now appears that the campus could be named to the Register by early next week, perhaps sooner.

I checked the Gropius in Chicago Coalition web site this morning, and, according to its count, four of the eight Walter Gropius-related buildings are still left at Reese. Of course, National Register status will do nothing to stop the demolition. But it will step up what preservationists call the "shame factor," with federal officials certifying that the City of Chicago--and Mayor Richard Daley--are destroying buildings and landscapes of national importance.

December 16, 2009

The vast CityCenter development in Las Vegas, which brings yet another casino, thousands of hotel rooms and buildings by an assortment of "starchitects" (including Chicago's Helmut Jahn) to a city whacked by the housing bust and desperate for an infusion of economic vitality, has its gala opening today.

Bloomberg's architecture critic, James Russell, offers a mixed take, writing that the complex "was supposed to invent an exuberantly cosmopolitan future" of top-drawer architecture and pedestrian-friendly urbanism. Yet, he adds, "CityCenter struggles to find its tone." Read more here.

And here is Los Angeles Times' architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's also-lukewarm take on CityCenter. After dissing the overall result, he writes: "To be fair, there are a handful of memorable architectural moments here. Helmut Jahn's yellow-clad 37-story Veer Towers (center,in the image here), set slightly askew, lean toward each other like a pair of drunken tourists careening down a hotel corridor at the end of a very long night."

Sounds like the Hotel Sofitel in Chicago, where the skyscraper's tilting prow recalls the drunks on Rush Street.

December 15, 2009

Chicago has several add-on skyscrapers, though none as extensive as 300 East Randolph, which houses Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois and has grown from 30 stories to 54 in a project led by Jim Goettsch and Joe Dolinar of Chicago’s Goettsch Partners. Here is a list of other notable vertical expansion plans, both built and unbuilt:

The Boyce Building, 500-510 North Dearborn St.—Developed by Chicago publisher William Dickson Boyce, it got underway in 1911 and ended in 1923. According to the form nominating The Boyce Building to the National Register of Historic Places, Boyce originally commissioned D.H. Burnham & Co. to design a 10-story office building that would house his publishing company and rental tenants. At first, however, only the four-story base of the Burnham design was built, and it was done in two stages—the first finished in 1912, the second in 1914. The base, which included printing presses, was only occupied by Boyce’s company. In 1921, Boyce commissioned architect Christian Eckstorm to add eight floors of rental space. The finished structure had 12 stories, instead of the 10 proposed by Burnham, and did not have the mansard roof Burnham proposed. It was was completed in 1923.

Union Station, 210 S. Canal St.--Conceived in Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago and built from 1913-1925 to the design of Burnham’s successor firm, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, Union Station was intended to be much more than a train station. Graham, Anderson envisioned a 20-story office tower set atop the station’s head house, but it was scaled down to three additional floors set back from the building’s austere classical base. Since the mid-1980s, according to the book “Lucien Lagrange: The Search for Elegance,” Chicago architect Lucien Lagrange has worked on three vertical expansion plans for the station, each one involving a different mix of uses. So far, none has been built.

December 14, 2009

Having seen my post about the Blue Cross Blue Shield vertical expansion at 300 East Randolph Street, photographer Larry Okrent shot over his own aerial picture of the site, and I'm glad he did. For the picture (click on it to enlarge) tells a part of the story that I wasn't able to dwell on in my earlier post.

The story is the dramatic change of the area around 300 East Randolph, which originally opened in 1997. It was the first office building completed in Chicago in five years, following the real estate crash of the early 1990s.

Since 1997, we've seen the 2004 opening of Millennium Park, just to the tower's southwest, on land that used to be a surface parking lot and exposed commuter railroad tracks. The condo tower called 340 on the Park, Chicago's first "green" skyscraper, went up in 2007, just to the east of 300 East Randolph. It was part of the big Lakeshore East development, which is centered on a handsome contemporary park and this year added the spectacular Aqua skyscraper.

What does all this add up to? A classic mix of urban coherence and architectural diversity. Okrent's picture makes clear how the vertically extended 300 East Randolph joins with the white stalk of the Aon Center, the two Prudential Center towers (one modern, the other postmodern), the handsome 340 on the Park and other residential high-rises to frame Grant Park's north flank--just as the cliff-like wall of historic office buildings shapes the park's western side.

All this strengthens Grant Park's identity as an urban room--a grandly-scaled outdoor space made more human-scaled by the wall-like enclosure of the buildings around it.

Ever since it opened in 1997, the office building at 300 East Randolph St. has served as a kind of oversize text message display for Chicago, capturing in one line of letters (or two) the city’s mood.

“USA,” its carefully arranged pattern of lights proclaimed on the night of Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency (left).

“Sox Win,” those lights read after the White Sox achieved their World Series triumph in 2005.

Now, that message display has grown bigger — able to accommodate at least three lines — courtesy of an audacious vertical expansion that has increased the skyscraper’s height to 54 stories from its original 30.

The project, located just northeast of Millennium Park, is the most extensive piece of add-on architecture ever done in Chicago, architectural historians say. And it is more than a technical achievement.

It endows the once-squat skyscraper with dramatically improved proportions and allows it to join with neighboring high-rises to form a handsome, clifflike wall on Grant Park’s north flank (left). Inside is a captivating variety of light-filled spaces that fight visual monotony.

Designed by Chicago architect Jim Goettsch — the namesake of Goettsch Partners, a Chicago architectural firm — and known by its street address, 300 East Randolph, the tower houses the headquarters of Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). The health insurer operates Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Illinois and three other states.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is featuring Lake Forest College's "Virtual Burnham Initiative" on its Web site. The effort, which includes 3-D models illustrating the results of the Burnham Plan, aims to use new technology and social networking to facilitate debate about the Plan. To learn more, click this link.

December 11, 2009

This hourlong documentary on architect Daniel Burnham works best as an informed primer on the visionary whose grandly ambitious "Plan of Chicago" dared the city to greatness a century ago. As filmmaking, it's pretty routine: Writer, producer and director Judith Paine McBrien favors the accepted-practice blend of letters read by voice-over actors, interviews with experts in architecture and urban planning (including the Tribune's architecture critic, Blair Kamin) and over-illustrative musical cues.

The details in this doc, narrated by Joan Allen, keep it interesting. We learn what one farmer, visiting the 1893 "White City" expo, was alleged to have said to his wife: "Well, Sarah, it cost us the burial money -- but it was worth it." Burnham's origins, socially expedient marriage and lofty theoretical plans for Cleveland and San Francisco are addressed, as is (gently) Chicago's perpetual, gnawingly inferior notion of itself in relation to New York. The fruits and ideals of Burnham's achievements are all around us, thankfully. As is, even now, that Second City complex.

December 10, 2009

It was a glorious but surreal year. Some of the last projects of the great, early 21st Century building boom opened, creating an image of frenzied activity even as the recession threw scores of architects out of work. The best endeavors recovered key aspects of Chicago’s past and endowed the city and its suburbs with future landmarks.Modern Wing: The Art Institute of Chicago’s new building, by Italian architect Renzo Piano, graced Millennium Park’s south flank with a refined modernist temple and provided serene galleries for the museum’s collection of modern and contemporary art.

Aqua: This hotel and residential tower (left), by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, brought undulating balconies and a spectacular sculptural presence to a skyline long characterized by repetitive, right angles.Serta International Center: Chicago architect Andrew Metter of Epstein made poetry from prosaic function in this elegant headquarters for the mattress makers. Located in Hoffman Estates, Serta appears to float lightly above the land.

December 09, 2009

Chicago is the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, a building that would forever transform the American landscape and the world at large. There's a passion for architecture here. Whether it's a new soaring office tower or the adaptive reuse of a deteriorating landmark, you can count on Chicagoans having an interest and an opinion.

Perhaps that's why it was so easy for four of the region's top architectural firms to say yes to the Chicago Tribune's request to design a gingerbread house in celebration of the holidays. Their designs range from Colonial New England (above) to the International Style of the mid-20th century and to today's cutting-edge "green" architecture.

If you are experienced with gingerbread houses or just very ambitious, you might want to make one of the projects. Go to chicagotribune.com/gingerbread for the architect's templates. For assembly hints, look over the instructions there for the Victorian farmhouse pictured on our cover.

Not all of the architects' ideas worked in gingerbread or on the scale called for. Kimberly Schwenke, the pastry chef of 312 Chicago restaurant, tackled the baking and assembling of the houses at the Tribune's request. She eliminated too-small details, like a forest of mini-trees, or substituted materials, such as fondant for gingerbread in a curving wall base.